Made in Texas

(wind whooshing) (thoughtful music) - [Narrator] When does a person become an artist?

Maybe they've worked hard and developed a strong technique.

At what point does the technician become an artist?

(thoughtful music) - That's a strange question.

Of course, I think you're an artist from the beginning.

(thoughtful music) - Somebody said in a bird's eye, you can see the reflection of God.

And I feel that intensely about nature.

I feel the closest to the creator in nature.

(thoughtful music) I feel like you've done an honest day's work when you sculpted a big piece.

That's one thing.

But the other thing too is of course the obvious is that you have a three dimensional opportunity of communicating.

(thoughtful music) (birds squawking) - I've been in this business for three decades now.

I met a lot of artists and sculptors.

Without any shadow that Kent Ullberg is the premier wildlife sculptor in the world.

- [Commentator] A real serious artist, he goes directly to nature of the information.

(water splashing) - [Kent] I'm passionate about nature and I'm hoping that people will see through my eyes and see how beautiful I find nature is.

See through my love, it's how precious it is and how worthy of taking care of.

(thoughtful music) - His work output is incredible.

I mean, he is got a hundred sculptures and public art collections at all across the globe.

- I think one of my favorites is probably "The Ring of Brightwater", the bigger size one.

This sold, that sold and it's going in the sculpture garden.

- I have tried for years to acquire a piece like that and you can only get them on the resale.

That little piece has sold three times.

I've been able to buy a couple of his on the secondary market.

And of course they improve in value all the time.

It's like bar of gold.

(uplifting music) - [Auctioneer] 8,000 here.

I got 20,000 here.

Now, 21, 22, 21.

You give 20, 20, 21, you give 22, 21 bid.

You give 22, you give 22, 21 bid.

You 21 bid.

You give two here now 23, you say three, 22.

Who's bidding over there?

23 now four.

23, you get 24,000, 23, you get four.

Four, now five.

24.

Did he give 20 by 24?

You out 26.

But he 27, asking 26, will he get seven?

Sold him for $26,000.

(crowd cheering) - [Coordinator] Patti, you won.

Now bring him home.

- We had a whole bunch of fun.

I wanna thank my pal Wes Hoskins, for doing this amazing offshoot with us.

(thoughtful music) - [Interviewer] You mentioned encouraging younger artists not to give up on their dreams, but the reality is that many are afraid.

They fear failure, financial anguish, and they fear not being good enough.

You obviously did take that leap and you've built an extraordinary life.

What do you think happens to a person who fully commits to following their dream?

- Wow.

(video tape whirring) I am a naturalist, I've been since I was a kid.

Dropping the fishing village in the fishing fleet, we'd sea bird dancing around.

That's why we would clean their trolls.

And I always loved nature and for me, I felt very insecure for some reason, you know, I don't know, I didn't fit in well, but when I'm in nature, I felt at home, I felt quite happy.

I've always been a bit of a loner.

I didn't have many friends.

One of the things is I had a very big nose, as you can see, I have a big nose.

And of course the school kids found out that I was insecure about my nose.

And I tried to walk, you know.

(children laughing) Of course, they realized they got result.

You know, I got mad and, but I was fairly strong and I fought the bastards.

My dad was exactly the opposite.

He was always self-confident and he tried make me self-confident.

And my dad always told me, (speaking foreign language) everything works only if you want it.

If you work at it, it works.

And he was absolutely certain.

Well, my dad played accordion and he actually worked in circuses.

He was a multi-talented man.

And he, he'd be on the swing with his accordion, you know, and stuff.

But he knew a very famous acrobats and circus men.

And they turned up in our house, you know, we had a teeny apartment, really, you know, and they hacked in the living room.

They were there for to visit with my dad, you know, and my mom put up with it amazingly.

They met at the fun fair.

My dad played, his band was playing there.

And my mom was sewing.

And mom went to art school, you know, and she was doing sculpture and stuff.

And they met and she got bloody pregnant immediately with me.

And she didn't want me.

She was think they would, thinking of abortion, you couldn't even have that in those days with was back street, you know, sticking pins in them and stuff.

So, but she was forced to have me.

Early, she took me when she didn't have babysitter, she took me to art classes.

And you've seen my right hand sculpting.

She sculpted from me as a baby.

I mean, I feel bad for her too, you know, because it completely cost her career.

But my mom and I, we didn't get along as well as I did with my grandma and mom sometimes had problems.

And she sent me to Grundsund, to the fishing village in (speaking foreign language) on an island in the North Sea to be raised by my grandmother.

And I love my grandmother above anything in the world.

She was so great.

She helped me with lack of confidence in certain ways, yes.

And certainly with school.

I had a hard time with mathematics, you know, that she taught me that she mumbled all the time at breakfast.

Six times six is 36.

And you know, she does speak like that, you know, bing, bing, bing, bing in the house all the time.

And of course then I come to school, it echoes in my head, you know, she knew how to teach and I knew she cared a lot for me.

You know, others loved her.

You know, Anna.

And then my grandpa was a captain on a trawler.

He owned his own trawler.

In the summers as kids, we worked on the boats stand and they dumped the cod land on deck.

We stand up to here and sea creatures and help sorting it out.

And I think that has a lot to do with my love of nature.

In our backyard, I watched the birds all the time and I had a little boat.

Finally when I sold enough a little boat, double-ended boat, a snekke, sailed out to the islands.

All the migratory birds come to the north, you know, to Scandinavia.

And I just laid there dreaming and listening to the birds.

(birds squawking) And then tried to, Peterson's book came out when I was in the fishing village, "Birds of Europe", Roger Peterson is the most famous birder in the world.

He illustrated all the American field guides and write the text and everything.

And I bought it with some income I got from my lobster traps.

And that sort of changed my life in a way, in that I looked at that and I found birds elsewhere, illustrated outside the fishing village, outside Gothenburg.

And it has something to do with trigger me to leave the fishing village.

I was so fortunate, University of Gothenburg had a special training school for high school kids.

And I hung out in the lab and there I was introduced to the director of the Natural History Museum, Bjorn Wennerberg.

He was a sculptor.

And he also was a taxidermist.

And I loved the man.

He taught me early taxidermy and how to interpret it too through sculpture and stuff.

And then when I was out of high school, he told me that he's gonna recommend me to the National Museum in Stockholm as a taxidermist apprentice first.

But he said, you have to go to art school too.

And so I did, I signed up to art school.

It was in the '60's.

And first we had classical training.

We modeled actually from nude models and realism, you know, which was good.

Anatomy research for a young man, you know.

But then after that, after the first year, you were not allowed to do realism at all.

Had to be totally abstract, minimalist.

And of course I sculpted nature and I sculpted this abstract, kind of stylized bear.

I kind of thought it was cool, you know?

My teacher said, what the hell is this?

You're supposed to do your own thing.

It is mounting, sir.

Well, you never make a living sculpting animals.

This is not the language of our time.

And I was a poor kid from the fishing village so I believed him.

And he was a kind man.

He worried about me.

Although he was a bully too.

- I think it's really difficult to be an artist, because to be an artist means you have to take something that is inside of you and put it out.

- I had a lot of meetings with professors who'd come in and be like, oh, you need to change it to this way, or look at this artist, change it that way.

The best advice is one that I told myself.

And that's not to take anyone's advice.

- I guess anybody who's ever tried to do anything extraordinary has had to figure out a productive way to handle the word no.

- And that's why I decided to take the full museum tour.

I studied in Germany, I spoke reasonable German, and I did all my exams in German.

And then I had met people that knew, had contacts in Africa who wrote them in with my broken English.

And they sent a man to London to interview me.

They needed a person to basically help starting safari business, teach the Africans to skin and how I travel in a boat across to England.

And I practiced English.

I read English books and practiced.

And how I convinced him, I don't know, but they sent a ticket to come to Botswana.

So I went the museum route.

(upbeat tribal music) - [Interviewer] What exactly did you do in that job?

The day to date stuff?

What did you find yourself doing that it brought you such joy?

- Well, the museum in Botswana, first of all, it was started by the Director of Wildlife and National Parks, Alec Campbell.

We met at a party and he found out there had a museum background.

And he was just starting to build Botswana's National Museum and Art Gallery.

And for the last four years in Botswana, I built the dioramas and stuff in the museum.

To create a diorama, you need the animals.

So I had unlimited license to go and shoot wherever I needed, wherever I wanted.

On the edge to the Kalahari, there were cattle ranches and there would be a lot of lions there.

And I was sent out to control them sometimes, you know, there was one specific lion that had killed several people.

He was lame on his, one of the back legs, they called him Sebalabalaquane, foot dragger.

He was pushed out of the pride long time ago.

He was getting old.

My boss sent some game scout after him, and it killed one of them.

And so I was sent out.

He would make a kill in one area.

And then he moved quite far before he made another kill.

And I had a bushman tracker who was so fantastic.

The Bushman really, really knew black magic to read tracks in the sand and stuff.

You know, for example, there's a track.

And he said, oh, he went here before sunup in the morning.

I mean, he said, don't you see that little little line there?

I said, yeah, that's by a beetle who only feeds during night.

And next morning we went and went after him.

We come up on heavy bush up ahead and my tracker, he said, that's him.

He is there.

Do you see him?

I said, no, I don't see him.

He said, he is there, he's looking at you.

(intense drumbeats) And so I walk up, you know, we load the gun.

And I was halfway there, and he breaks out completely and runs right for me.

And I knew I was gonna be eaten.

And I lifted my gun and by sheer luck, I hit him, hit him in the head.

If you look at the skull there, you see where I hit him in the face and he fell dead.

And my bushman tracker went to sit on him.

Ha ha ha ha.

And he was still had air in his lungs.

He went arrgh, groaned, and my bushman tracker took off completely.

And he ran and he climbed up in the tree.

He was so embarrassed, you know, he come down and I said, what the hell is wrong?

He said, well, I hate lions.

I said, why?

Well, when I was a baby, a lion came into our grass hut and grabbed me and dragged me off.

And my mom ran back and grabbed a firebrand from the fireplace and stuck up the lion's ass and the lion dropped me.

And I said, okay, is that really possible?

He said, he lifted his shirt, his leather shirt, and there was a huge scar.

You know, the scar grows with the person, you know?

The lion had covered his whole side there with his bite.

And he survived.

So from there on, he tracked lions for a living, you know?

And when I grew up in Sweden, I read Hemingway in Swedish.

I loved Hemingway.

And now I lived like Hemingway in a way.

You know?

- [Interviewer] How do you reconcile conservation and hunting?

How do you pull, all and your art, how does all that come together?

- My hunting was first of all, to be displayed in the museum.

I looked at the musculature, I dissected it.

I looked at everything.

I looked inside his stomach, what it ate and measurements, sketchbooks full of measurements.

So I measured a full length from nose to eye.

And of course it was very useful in the mounting of the animal.

But also later in my sculpture too.

I believe that I don't sculpt anything I have not experienced.

So that's why I'm so grateful.

I had the opportunity to intimate study African animals.

And that's my gratitude, you know?

And I studied the bushman too.

I spent months with them in the bush, following them on their hunts.

(upbeat music) (African natives singing in foreign language) And then the Denver Museum, Nature and Science, they came on an expedition.

They were building a giant African exhibit, a big hall, African hall.

And of course I shot the most dangerous animals for them and guided them.

And we spent a lot of time around campfires, at night partying.

And I found out I really liked Americans.

They were friendly and kind and fun.

And then when they left, the president of the board who owned their Denver Broncos, a wealthy man, he sent me a ticket to visit Denver.

- [Captain] We're currently cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet with tailwinds about 80 miles per hour.

With the extra wind in the sails, we should be making our descent on her schedule.

And it's no, nay, never No, nay, never, no more Will I play the wild rover No, never, no more - [Kent] The American West blew me away.

The landscape was awesome and the people were very friendly.

If you're a European, it's probably the best place to come for a first impression of America.

Once I got to the States, I could hardly sleep because I didn't want to miss any of it.

They put me up in first class hotels.

You know, I was a poor man, living from African wages, God.

And then it took me up in the mountains, took cowboy bars with saw dust on the floor.

I loved it.

You know, I thought I was in the wild West.

- 'Bout the time you showed up.

(objects clattering) As you know, Europeans, we were enamored by the Wild West.

We were totally enamored.

And then they took me to Lookout Mountain, with the bison heard, whew, I really got excited.

They hired me to supervise building the African exhibit.

And Botswana Hall it's called today.

And I worked for two years at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Opened the first phase, designed the rest.

And then I jumped off the bridge.

The best paid job I ever had in my life to do my sculptures full time.

(thoughtful music) Like I said, when I went to art school, realism was not allowed.

It all was sculpted on the side.

You know, I did portrait commissions, I did all sorts of sculpting all the time.

I used to say I sculpt even if it was illegal.

But I couldn't make a living in Europe.

But then I came here and then the western art movement was underway.

And it made me realize I had a chance, maybe.

(thoughtful music) Success was not immediate.

I was living hand to mouth and putting out my bronzes one at a time.

Any extra money I ha at the end of the month, I funneled into another piece.

I even took out a second mortgage on my house to pay the foundry.

And then there was a competition sponsored by the National Academy of Design.

The judges were impressed and they awarded me the Helen Foster Barnett Prize of 500 bucks.

It was not an enormous amount of money, but the attention was invaluable.

I flew out to New York City in my rented tux and rented shoes.

The night of the award ceremony February 21st, 1975 will always be remembered as a load star.

It opened doors.

Here's my working place, it's got a portrait of my wife, of Veerle.

We met accidentally actually.

And we were at the Scandinavian Folklife Festival in Denver.

They invited me to a party at the neighbors'.

And I said, okay, I bring a girlfriend.

No, no, no, there's plenty girls here.

There I met Veerle, and we started talking.

And God, we had so much in common, really, you know?

- Apart from the obvious attractions of his Nordic good looks, I found him a rather heady cocktail.

He was very concerned with contemporary issues, with a good dose of self-doubt and Scandinavian broodiness thrown in.

We immediately found a lot in common, probably thanks to our similar European background.

But he had no plans of being married.

In fact, he had to get rid a few girlfriends before anything serious could happen between us.

I worked for an American firm as a secretary, and I could type, I mean, that was a good thing.

- She handled all the correspondence.

She touched in French with a typewriter, la da la, completely dealt with everything, with the shipping, with everything you know, and the organization and everything - I think I seduced you with my typing, didn't I?

- Yes.

The clickety click, clickety click, clickety click.

When you're an artist, your time can become literally consumed by the office and logistical work.

I'm very fortunate that Veerle took over the business side of my career by managing money, which I am poor at.

She frees me to concentrate solely on the creative side of my work.

- In 1980, the National Academy in New York City inducted him.

He was one of the very first wildlife artists to be accepted.

At that point, it seemed like I could barely keep up with the demand from collectors.

And that's when the commissions for public monuments came pouring in as well.

(thoughtful music) - I was commissioned by Ed Harte, the Corpus Christi call the Times.

Ed Harte was always a naturalist.

In fact, he belonged to a major conservation organization.

He was a great man, become a good friend.

And so he decided to commission a piece on the Ocean Drive.

And I was thinking, you know, what could it be?

What could it be?

Well, there were all the fishing boats laying there in those days, right across from it, you know?

And in Sweden we have a well wish for when you go fishing, have wind in the sails.

Because in those days, early days saw sailing ships.

And you wish wind in the sails to somebody.

So I tried to take two sailfish and create an abstract design.

But realistic sailfish.

And I called it "Wind in the Sails".

It's my well wish to Corpus Christi.

(chuckling) - [Interviewer 2] And there's no back to it, really.

- No, no.

- 'Cause you, no matter what side of the street- - Yep.

- No matter what side you're on- - It's interesting from what side.

And that's the good thing about understanding abstract design too.

You look at it from all around, you know, to make sure it speaks.

(thoughtful music) I studied in Paris, you know, a lot.

I worked in museum south of Paris, (speaking French).

I've, one day I found a giant sculpture of Matisse four panels where he analyzed a rear of a female nude.

And the first one was totally realistic.

And then it got a little more stylized and then a little more stylized.

And then totally, almost totally abstract using the same kind of shapes.

That piece inspired a sculpture showing my own evolution too.

And my evolution went the opposite direction.

I start with abstraction from my art school days.

'Cause all my work, even though they're representational, have an abstract content, abstract design, which I learned in art school in the '60's.

I think the most incredible wake up call I ever had was at National Sculpture Society in New York.

I was there and I exhibited there.

I won award.

And the big award winner there was Philip Johnson, the great famous architect who we studied in art school in.

And he decided Corpus Christi Art Museum, by the way, and his thank you speech, he said, "While the wheel of Earth moves slowly, it nevertheless comes full circle.

But once was archaic is now avant garde.

I salute you the sculptors of the present avant garde."

And I just couldn't believe it.

I just almost fell off my chair.

I wasn't born till late after all.

(thoughtful music) And here is the remnants from one of my figurative pieces.

And that's a daughter, Hispanic dancer, actually.

But I thought that the Hispanic dancers, when they danced, they looked like a seashell when they kick up.

So it was perfect for the performing arts center in Corpus Christi because it looks out over the sea.

And I call it "Danzamar", "Dance of the Sea", "Danzamar".

But I'm so bloody grateful to living and working in America.

I'm the most grateful, happy American you'll ever meet.

And I raised my kids to kiss the ground when they wake up in the morning.

It's fantastic.

You know, give them the opportunity to live my dream.

I want to tell you, when we came to Corpus Christi the first time, it was sheer chance.

I had an exhibition in Oklahoma City, The Cowboy Hall of Fame, and decided to drive down and take a look at the water, 'cause we heard that Texas actually had a sea.

And we drove over the Harbor Bridge and that did it.

The smiling bay, the Corpus Christi Bay.

My heart just went, boom, boom.

You know, I just fell in love.

I grew up in the fishing mill.

I loved the sea.

We drove out, drove around for a while and drove out to the island and immediately turned to the right on the first street there, Aquari Street.

And there was a house for sale here on the canal.

We signed on the dotted line.

- Well, we made an offer.

- Well, she made an offer.

I was willing to pay whatever they wanted, you know, and they, they had, you know, asking price and she reduced it.

And I said, God damn.

Come on, why?

Well, why do you do that?

I mean, it's our life, you know, maybe we won't get it.

Well, that's okay, she said.

You know, but we did get it.

And she's always clever.

She runs the business.

- My birthday is Cinco de Mayo.

- She's Taurus.

- Yeah.

- She's a bully.

- Keep going.

- And she bullies and bullies like all bullies too.

We alter the prices too, all the time.

She wants to raise the price.

- He's the artist.

They don't know money.

- And I do know money I ran a museum in Africa and stuff.

But, but the thing is, when when you start something, you want people to want it and you worry about that, they're gonna be able to afford it.

You know, you want to communicate with your work, you know, speak about what I love nature and stuff.

And she's of course looking at the money bit and she said, no, no, that's not enough.

You know, and we argue like hell about that.

And sometimes she raises the prices against my will.

- An artist is always willing.

They're so flat that when somebody likes their work, they will give it away.

Of course, - Not give it away, but a reasonable price.

We argue sometimes about it.

And we certainly argued in the drive back from Corpus Christi and I thought that she was trying to sabotage me going to the sea.

But we got it.

You know?

And that's the best thing we've ever done.

It was a perfect place to race two boys, you know?

And- - He thought.

- I definitely know it.

- When we drove to Texas for the first time and we got down to Corpus Christi and there is a, the smell about the ocean.

And as we continued into Corpus and then we made it out to the island and we saw the water.

We, my brother and I, just, this is it.

This is us.

- With Robert, our oldest.

He shared a kindredness with Kent for intensity and work ethic.

And with Gerald, I think Kent felt drawn to the lightness in his personality.

- [Kent] He loved to kid around, which was good for me because I was always a very serious person.

- [Veerle] Another way I first really knew what kind of impression you had on the boys was Gerald was about nine.

And we were walking our evening walk.

Says to me, Mom, when I die, I wanna come back as a an eagle.

Well, what makes you say that?

He says, do you know they can't be hunted?

They were in and did with the natural world and stuff like that.

- Yes.

I mean, well we went birding together.

Birdwatching.

And I also love to teach them about nature in the boat.

And I must say that Robert was an absolute natural with boats.

When he was just early teens, I let him take my 36 foot boat off on his own with friends.

- I mean, both my brother and I were allowed to pursue whatever passion we had.

Our family was not one of, well, when you go to school and then you'll go to high school and then you'll go to college, and then you get your degree and then you go get your job.

My brother and I were allowed to explore our work, our music, our thoughts, our politics.

- Gerald got a hobby with diving.

I lost an anchor there at one time in Shamrock Island.

And I couldn't find it.

Then Gerald, said, I'll go and get it.

And he went and he bloody stayed underwater for a long time.

You know, I was scarred he was gonna run outta air, but he found the anchor.

So I dare say it's a perfect place to move to, to Corpus Christi, Texas.

And I love it.

During the summer of 1986, I had been given a commission by the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences to sculpt a dinosaur monument.

I got to meet the man who discovered Deinonychus.

He found of Deinonychus, was a claw sticking out, a long sharp claw.

And so he named it Deinonychus antirrhopus, the terrible claw counterbalanced.

'Cause he figured they were balanced too.

They walked very cleverly and smartly and stuff.

And to capture the hypothetical skin folds and texture of these extinct creatures, I really wanted to go to Galapagos.

'Cause I read about Darwin, you know, and always interested about evolution.

So we got opportunity to go to Galapagos on a cruise, Veerle and I, and we took Gerald with us, 'cause Robert was in college.

Looking back on it now, it ended up being a very special trip for us.

And Gerald took photographs documenting the trip, which also helped me with the sketches I made before I began the commission.

When I sculpted it, I style, I had them running across a stylized kind of claw shape.

And then later "Jurassic Park" came and they named the creatures Velociraptor, raptors.

And that is not at all the same species, you know, but it's very similar to my Deinonychus.

And one of the reasons is that the man who was an animator for the movie, he's a friend of mine, he's a great artist, he's a great painter.

He asked if you could have my drawings.

And I said, sure.

You know, of course I've worked with Dr.

Ostrom.

And so when people see my Deinonychus, they say, oh yeah, the, he got that from "Jurassic Park".

(laughing) However successful we felt at the time- - It was the last monumental installation we would experience with all members of the family present.

He was actually dyslexic.

And so it did start with school only.

He had very nice teacher and he got into Flour Bluff.

- He had one of the best teachers he ever could dream of in Flour Bluff.

- Yeah, I could tell that he was a kid who wanted to learn to read.

'Cause it had, it had cut him off from certain things and maybe even cut him off from friends sometimes.

- Gerald did so well, thanks to you madam, thanks to his teacher in Flour Bluff school.

And he managed to graduate from high school.

- Yeah.

- You know?

- Yeah.

- Unfortunately, after he graduated from high school, he got killed in a car accident.

By the car I bought him for his graduation.

And in the end we had him cremated.

He sat there quite a while.

And then we decided to take the boat out and dropped him in the Gulf Stream because the Gulf Stream that floats up to Scandinavia, floats up in the North Sea, is really responsible for the marine life in the North Sea.

So I put Gerald in there so he can go and say hi to his family up there.

- But in real Gerald style, we flung the ashes out over the water and the wind came up and it blew everything in our faces.

- That's, that was Gerald style.

Ha, ha.

- I'm fine, - I'm fine.

- You do have to kind of, but you know, I mean, it's never done.

(thoughtful music) (birds squawking) - The aim for my work is to communicate about nature, about my love for nature and its importance.

Importance to our souls and importance also to be preserved.

- To convey the majesty and the beauty and the power of some of these animalty sculpts, what better way to do it than represented either life size or double life size?

(keyboard keys clacking) (upbeat music) (keyboard keys clacking) (upbeat music) To be honest with you, I met Kent through his work for many years before I actually met the man, specifically Kent was over here in Fort Lauderdale to install the biggest piece of wildlife sculpture ever put in place, the Sailfish in Three Stages of Ascent".

(thoughtful music) - For the rest of the space, we needed something more.

So I decided why, why not analyze the fish jumping?

So first the fins sticking out and then halfway up and then all the way up with water spraying from the splashes and stuff.

(upbeat music) (keyboard keys clacking) (thoughtful music) - He was just so approachable, personable, knowledgeable.

At that stage in the late '80's, I was very preoccupied with very detailed drawings.

Being a fish illustrator as I was called by some people, I hadn't yet become a fish artist.

Kent was very analytical about my style.

He said, I admire all the anatomy that you portray, but in real life people don't see that when they're looking att nature.

I couldn't believe it, you know, I was so focused on detail and scale counts and fin counts and the way fish are supposed to look.

Kent would say, Harvey, you are overdoing it.

Bloody hell man.

And as we got to know each other better, he suggested to go into other media and to add watercolors to pen and link drawings, which I did with fear and trepidation.

You know, am I gonna ruin this piece of art?

- [Interviewer] You hadn't done a watercolor up to that point?

- Not at all.

I was scared to death of watercolors and now it's my preferred medium.

And Kent always said, slow down, take time.

Look at your work.

If you get stuck with something stuck, in inverted commas, let it rest for a couple days and come back to it.

And all of that advice is just so helpful.

- Veerle was a good critic of mine and she knew when that didn't do real good stuff.

But she also knew when something was really valuable, something nicely done.

And sometimes I work and work and work and get so tired, I'm ready to flatten it, bonk.

- He'd get depressed and turn them all into flapjacks that had to be peeled off his sculpting table with a spatula.

And I would try to convince him to just put the sculpture aside.

- Sometimes Veerle stopped me.

No, no, no, no.

Leave it to next day and look at it.

And I look at it next day and it showed me what he wanted to be.

- I'll never forget when Kent said the American Wildlife Art Museum is going to be opened in Jackson Hole and you need to come to this.

Going to the opening of that gallery and meeting all the other artists and seeing his piece of work, "Waiting For Sockeye", which is that iconic brown bear kind of slouched on a rock, matches the landscape beautifully around.

But meeting all the other big name artists there in that genre was really special.

- [Interviewer] So in what ways do you think you might have influenced Kent's journey as maybe both a scientist and an artist?

- I don't know that I have much influence on Kent.

He is pretty good at fixing things for himself.

I've always told everybody else, there's nothing like getting in front of these animals to really be inspired by them.

And so where the relationship really blossom was to go on some expeditions together.

- I've also promised IRS I won't enjoy myself.

So I've been working very hard and I haven't enjoyed one minute.

(upbeat music) Sitting on the gunnel waiting for you two crazy bastards that go in the water with the marlin and the sharks.

And then I'd dip in afterwards.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - I'll never forget him working at the weigh station with the clay model.

And then as the time went by, he would refine the whole process.

And a black marlin would suddenly appear out of this lump of clay.

(camera shutter clicking) Observing nature directly is the absolute key.

And Kent taught me this earlier as well.

- You know, real serious artists goes directly to nature information.

- I want to communicate about their nature.

I want to do an honest communication, not just from photographs, but from direct experience.

You know, when they turn like this, you see a different angle and.

- There are many people who work off photographs and nothing wrong with that.

Many people who work off other people's art be inspired by it.

But the ultimate goal is to inspire them to be original.

And I think that's what Kent did.

He pointed me in the right direction.

- After all these years, I had the retrospective exhibition in the main museum, sculpture museum in Stockholm.

And who turns up but my professor?

(chuckling) And he was tall, six foot six or something and slim, you know, and in a black suit, he just as intimidating as ever.

Here I am, big career, long time gone, you know?

And I was scared.

I said, oh, hello, Professor yes.

Even at my age.

And he said, Kent, I'm proud of you.

Things have changed.

You know, so it was like going back in time, you know, and recycle.

The cycle was closed.

(thoughtful music) - [Newscaster] Internationally acclaimed artist and sculptor who lives on Padre Island is making waves with his latest gallery exhibition.

His name is Kent Ullberg and his latest exhibit is on display at the Arc Museum of South Texas.

- [Interviewer 4] As I asked around, everybody knew the work.

They all knew "Wind in the Sails", they all knew "Surfing Jesus".

They all knew- - Yes.

- [Interviewer 4] They knew all the work, but they didn't know who did it.

And they didn't know he lived right there on the island.

[Newscaster] If you're not familiar with Ullberg's work, all you have to do is look around the city for many of his sculptures.

The most noticed of them is the sculpture of Jesus Christ.

Called "It is I", which is in front of the First United Methodist Church on Shoreline Boulevard.

In 1928, Corpus Christi's Chamber of Commerce proposed a grand plan, a colossal statue of Jesus walking on water in the bay.

They enlisted Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, but political conflict sank the project.

Over the next decades, the city couldn't shake the idea.

Proposals included a statue taller than Rio's "Christ the Redeemer".

Each attempt failed, sparking intense debate.

Supporters argued it was fitting for a city named body of Christ.

While critics raised concerns about separation of church and state.

- Gutzon Borglum came to Corpus Christi before he carved Mount Rushmore and made a proposal about a giant Christ statue.

And if Corpus had done that, we would be as famous as Rio de Janeiro.

The first thing come to consider when you do a monumental sculpture is the sight.

The site dictates everything.

Sight will tell you the scale and the design.

And then finally, first United Methodist Church decided that they have land that goes right down to the water and they're gonna place a Christ statue there.

And I was commissioned to do it.

So we start with drawings.

Now what would Christ be doing?

Arms up, triumphant?

I put him in a boat and everybody in the committee was, you know, I had to deal with the committee, you know, and back and forth, you know, and they say, why the hell why you put him in a boat?

Well, he was a fisherman, he was a friend of fishermen.

You know, why not in a boat?

And actually, and then say, yeah, well what, do you know what a boat looked like from that period?

Well, it so happened that they just found a boat in the Sea of Galilee from that time.

And I knew the museum people and they sent me drawings.

So that boat is accurate from Jesus time and from all this information I built the maquette, which is a scale model and brought to the committee and it was approved.

But this is how we start, using the maquette as a guide.

Simple steel pipes, and armature strong enough to support the weight of the clay.

That's to make it about 7,000 pounds of clay.

Well, here is the model of the face takes one side of it.

Borglum's granddaughter, Robin Carter was living in Corpus Christi and she spoke at the dedication and she said my grandfather would be proud.

And that just really moved me so much.

I thank you so much for your trust in me.

I hope on Sunday when it would be unveiled that you find that your trust was warranted.

Do you have any regrets looking back?

- No, I don't really have any regrets.

Broad regrets.

I have regrets for looking back of jobs that I turned down.

You know, for example, I was asked, and I was commissioned to do the Selena here in Corpus Christi.

I had just finished the Christ statue and I didn't feel that I was qualified.

I did not know anything about Hispanic music.

So a younger artist who I knew well, got to do it.

And now Selena is the most famous piece on Ocean Drive, you know, and damn, I should have done it.

On the other hand, I took on the biggest project of all in Omaha, Nebraska.

That probably all the regrets built up to that.

Yes, damn it.

(laughing) (thoughtful music) - [Newscaster 2] For more than a decade, three world renowned sculptors and one of America's foremost landscape architects have been creating what is now one of the world's largest installations of heroic scale bronze sculptures.

120 pieces, all one and a quarter life size stretching over and through five city blocks in downtown Omaha, Nebraska.

- We were in the process of doing an redevelopment in downtown Omaha and building our tower.

We had the bank, and as a part of the master planning, we set aside a couple of green spaces.

- We're supposed to turn dirty parking lots with casts and junk into a beautiful park with a fountain.

- So as part of kind of elevating downtown and understanding the importance of art and community, we wanted themes.

We thought about Nebraska as a crossroads.

- It was the jump off point for the western movement, was Omaha.

- People migrated east to west, while wildlife migrate north to south.

And we wanted to talk about our history in the past and a nod to that.

But we also were interested in the optimism of the future.

(thoughtful music) - [Kent] The spirits of Nebraska wilderness.

Those animals were here first.

And the spirit of wilderness is still with us today.

And they don't respect buildings.

They go where they please.

(thoughtful music) - Kent's greatest works may stand in bronze and stainless steel, but they're really monuments to something deeper for the journey of an artist.

It's very easy to fall into the trap of giving up.

- (speaking foreign language) You have to bend your wishes, your will to it.

I think being an artist is the mindset.

I lived a really full life.

I did, and I lived my dream.

First I dreamt of going to Africa and then I came to the US and I dreamt of being a sculptor.

And I've made a living as a sculptor.

I'm living my dream in this country.

I'm the most, as you know, I've already said that before.

I'm the grateful American you've ever met.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Living my dream.

You?

(chuckling) (thoughtful music) "Merry Time Romance" is two seahorses, male and female meeting together.

And they normally have a ritual dance in the mornings together.

You know, they mate for life.

Life is just a year or something, you know, but, and when she is ready, she lays her eggs in his belly pouch and he carries them and gives birth.

And he has a big belly sometimes and he give birth a hundred babies.

And the tails come together and form an upside down heart.

And I thought I liked it that because that's the only species I know that is fair to the females, you know?

So I want to call it 'Maritime Romance".

Marine romance.

And she renamed it merry time, M-E-R-R-, merry time.

- I sold that piece.

(laughing) - I fought like hell because I wanted it to be serious.

You know?

Since she fills out all the forms for entry to shows and stuff, she put it there whether I wanted it or not.

But the thing is, the whole thing is that people loved it.

They loved the title, they laughed and we sold it out, sold it out, it sold out, the maquette.

And then I used to maquette course to make the big eight foot sculpture for Rockport Art Center at the right, at the entrance of Rockport Art Center.

Here is the "Merry Time Romance".

With her title, sitting there greeting people and everybody loves it.

So what can I do?

You know?

- [Interviewer] But in the end then you found that she's typically right, this fun film.

- Very often she's right.

I'd say about seventy- - We're still sleeping - In the same bed, you know, 75%.

She's not always right about the pricing.

I know that, but nothing we can do about that.

(Kent laughing) (upbeat music) (bright music)